


Silence Is for Little Aches

by lazarov



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Bulimia, Eating Disorder, Future Fic, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 12:25:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9820484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarov/pseuds/lazarov
Summary: Louis didn't expect Liam's food issues to still be haunting their home, more than ten years on.(Or maybe it's not a haunting, so much as a possession.)





	

  

**Part One:**

**Fall, 2025.**

 

He hasn’t heard it in months, but Louis has practically trained himself to awaken to the sound of socked feet on tile.  

The same goes for the flush of a toilet, or the sound of a faucet in the middle of the night.  These noises are coded into his brain now, Pavlovian, occupying the same mental space (and eliciting the same deeply-coded fear response, all cold-sweats and jittery heartbeat) an air raid siren might've.

He wakes up and he’s alone in bed.  Putting his hand out to feel Liam’s side (still warm), he strains his ears and hopes to hear something different, but it’s exactly the same: feet padding down the creaking wood-paneled staircase, then into the kitchen, then the click of the refrigerator door and the low, constant hum as it’s left open.  Louis waits a few minutes, frozen, before he slides out of bed and into the dark of the house.  

He approaches slowly, carefully, his hands held out in front of him and his knees bent into a half-crouch; he doesn’t know what state Liam’s in, and he doesn’t want to spook him.

“Hey now,” Louis whispers, pushing the refrigerator door closed and kneeling down.  Liam has his knees pulled up to his chin and has nose has gone red from sitting in front of the cold.  There’s a jar of Nutella in his lap and his thumb traces circles ‘round the lid, over and over and over.

His bare knees hurt on the tile and he leans close to press a warm hand to Liam’s jaw, then his lips to Liam’s ear.  He whispers, “Are you okay,” then, “come to bed?”

It takes a moment for Liam’s fingers to tangle themselves in Louis’ t-shirt but when they do, they’re cold as a corpse and he chokes against Louis’ chest, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t, shh,” Louis murmurs against the top of Liam’s head.  “Don’t be sorry, never sorry.”

 

* * *

 

He waits until morning, when they’ve both sat down with their tea and begun their morning ritual of flipping through the newspaper side-by-side, grumbling back and forth about the headlines.  The both know the question is inevitable and they bide their time, avoiding each other’s gaze.

Until.

“What happened last night?” Louis asks, neutrally, as if it’s any other question, as if he’s commenting on last night’s shit Showstopper ratings or the rain outside or whether or not the milk in his coffee might’ve gone off.  He doesn’t even look up from the entertainment section when he says it.  But Liam still pushes his chair away from the kitchen table with a pointed screech.

“Nothing,” Liam says tersely.  “Nothing happened.”

And maybe that’s true, Louis decides, because Liam’s had other slip-ups, real slip-ups, and maybe sitting on the kitchen floor, staring into the refrigerator at four in the morning doesn’t count.  Maybe that’s progress, even, because finding Liam like that is miles less terrifying than what Louis has found in the past (that is: Liam hunched in the bathroom, eyes red and wild, his hair sweaty and his mouth reeking).

“I was just feeling shitty,” Liam adds.

“Shitty-shitty?” Louis asks, trying to ask without really asking, because for Liam feeling shitty is more than just feeling shitty and Louis isn’t sure how to take that.

“It was just a bad night, can we not read into it too much?  Give me some credit.”

Louis holds his hands up: _I give in,_ although the idea that him being concerned might at all be related to not giving Liam credit is a bit, well.  Offensive?  Not offensive.  Frustrating.  “Sorry,” he says.  “Okay.  D’you want eggs?”

They stare at each other for a tense moment.  

“Please,” Liam nods, finally, and Louis lets out the breath he was holding.  “Scrambled.”

Louis hoists himself up out of his chair and shuffles towards the fridge, ruffling an hand through Liam’s hair on his way by.   _We’re good,_ he thinks.   _If he can let it slide, then it’s the truth: it’s not a big deal._

“It’s the tenth,” Liam says.  Louis looks over his shoulder and squints at him, not sure what trap he’s being led into.  Anniversary?  Birthday?  Neither, he decides after a moment.  Shit, shit.

“And?” he asks carefully, waiting to hear how badly he’s probably cocked up something important.

“ _And_ , Niall’s preview is tonight,” Liam says, picking the newspaper back up, and Louis tips forward until his forehead smacks the fridge door with a loud thunk.  He groans dramatically.  “I guess you forgot?”

“I forgot,” Louis admits, turning his head and smushing his cheek against the cool steel.  He closes his eyes.  “I was looking forward to not having to listen to any bad acoustic covers by blokes with soul patches and man-buns for a whole twenty-four hours, and now I have to go listen to a musical.  A _musical_.  The world is trying to kill my spirit.”

“And what spirit you have,” Liam agrees, drily.  “You’re being dramatic.  We’re going, obviously.  It’s his big premiere - or, do these event-things count as premieres?  Soft opens, more like?”

“Of course we’re going.”  Louis sighs.  He drags himself upright and rubs his cheek-print off the door before digging through their groceries for eggs and sour cream.  He stops at the toaster to pop in two slices of brown bread, then sets to cracking and scrambling as Liam snatches up the newspaper and combs through the entertainment section.

“We could get trashed and stay in the London flat tonight,” Liam suggests lightly, wiggling his eyebrows at him over the edge of the paper.

A smile tugs at the corner of Louis’ mouth.  “As if there were any question we weren’t going to get embarrassingly hammered and stay in the London flat.”  He isn’t sure whether or not to let Liam off the hook so easily - but then, maybe Liam’s letting him off the hook for being presumptuous and invasive and dramatic.   _Whatever_ , he decides, _fucking truce._   Louis adds a dollop of sour cream and adds, casually, “We’ll get hammered and I’ll fuck you silly.”

Liam smiles up at him and it feels like a reward for letting it slide, for choosing the right page in this complicated fucking Choose Your Own Adventure (that he feels like he screws up both continually and royally).  “You’d better,” Liam hums, flicking to the Finance section and tilting back in his chair with a wink.

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, though they nearly miss it thanks to Friday-evening traffic, the show is wonderful, legitimately wonderful (shockingly, without the usual qualification of  ‘for a musical’ and not just because his wonderful, old friend is starring in it).  

Niall plays an inspiring schoolteacher, rallying his class to a higher level of social awareness and self-awareness or whatever, and Louis reckons it’s all very Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting or any inspirational Robin Williams movie you’d like, really.  Niall even has his own ‘O Captain, my Captain’ moment, a crescendoing pop-rock number that ends to whoops and cheers and delighted applause and he catches himself glancing over at Liam, who’s leaned over with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his hands.  

His eyebrows are drawn together in intense focus and his eyes dart back and forth, tracking the movements onstage, dancing from chorus to orchestra to Niall.  There’s a childlike sort of longing on his face; in the way his mouth hangs ever-so-slightly open, in the way his eyes widen every time one of the cast members hits a particularly beautiful vocal run. Louis elbows him in the ribs, gently, and Liam turns his head a millimetre towards him, keeping his eyes half-trained on the stage.  

“What?” he whispers behind his hand.

But Louis’ already forgotten what he wanted to say.  “I love you,” he mumbles instead, louder than he’d intended, earning him an irritated over-the-shoulder glance from the woman in front of them.  “Not you,” he tells her, and she snaps her head back to towards the stage.

“Shh,” Liam admonishes.  He doesn’t pull his eyes away from the show, but his fingers brush against Louis’ knee and he squeezes what Louis assumes is an _I love you, too_.

It’s been - God, how many? - _eight_ years since Liam put out his solo album.  The reception was lukewarm, at best; Liam had agonized over one brutal Pitchfork review in particular, the one that branded the lead single as “uncool dad-rock that can’t even ride the easy coattails of boy-band nostalgia” and labeled Liam “the boring one, the Lynx-soaked Baby Spice of One Direction.”  The latter comment, especially, had left Liam in such a self-destructive spiral that, to this day, Louis refuses to do any promo for Showstopper that requires him to give Pitchfork an interview (not that they _want_ one - they’re clearly too cool for his capitalist manufactured treacle-pop bullshit or what-the-fuck-ever).

Eight years since Liam’s album, and a sporadic-at-best output since then.  It’s been at least a couple years since Liam’s made any music, period.  Niall’s always trying to get him to _jam_ (Niall’s word, not his, _Jesus_ ), cajoling him into dropping the occasional surprise track online to get some hype going and to keep him relevant.  He’s not sure if Liam is interested in being relevant anymore, though.  He knows Liam looks at his own job - a smiling, talking head beamed into people’s living rooms twice (God, sometimes _thrice_ ) weekly - with a certain amount of loving disdain, and, truth be told, he can’t exactly fault him for it.  

Showstopper is Simon’s last-ditch effort at rebooting the Pop Idol family line.  It’s soul-sucking and creatively-bereft and shallow and requires him to wear a lot of foundation and bronzer (and, admittedly, it’s kind of ball-crushing to still, more than a decade later, be under Simon’s very heavy thumb).  But Louis wouldn’t say Showstopper is a _bad_ job.  There’re plenty worse.  Hell, the _band_ was worse most days.  At least now he gets to go home in the evenings to his own home, his own bed, to Liam waiting with hot tea and a patient ear and big, gentle hands.  

And he’s good at it - as good as he’s been at anything, he reckons - which makes it oddly satisfying in spite of the shallowness; even though he’s been given his fair share of shit over the years for his singing (“the weak link,” he likes to call himself, which always makes Liam pull a wounded face and smack him on the shoulder, as if on cue - really, he just prefers to say it to get ahead of everyone else’s thoughts) he’s learned he has a fantastic ear.  He has a knack for making the audience laugh without it being at the expense of the performer.  People - from what Liam tells him - really, truly _like_ him.

“D’you think you could be mean, like Simon?” Liam’d asked him one day, not long after the premiere, sprawled across his lap and munching on caramel popcorn, a good half of it missing his mouth and falling between the cushions of the sofa.  “Seems like he’s really gung-ho on the whole Mean Simon thing on the show - it’s like his Cruelty Renaissance, probably makes people tune in every week even more than the singing.  D’you think he gets himself off in his hotel room to the memory of all the weeping tone-deaf rejects throwing wobblers on the floor thanks to his tongue lashings?”

“I don’t need to think about Simon getting himself off, thanks,” Louis snorted, flicking Liam’s nose.  He thought about the question for a moment, munching on another handful of popcorn.  Finally, he swallowed and explained:  “I don’t want to be mean.  I think a lot of people - viewers - think I am, though.”

“Mean?”

“Mhmm,” Louis nodded, snagging a kernel of popcorn out of Liam’s fingers before he could get it into his mouth.  “I think I have a reputation.  Bitchy and that.  But then, it works in my favour, because when I’m not mean at all, people think I’m being vulnerable.  That I’m a secret softie.  All about relatability and that, yeah?  Which is why I’m everyone’s favourite judge.”

“You’re my favourite judge,” Liam said brightly, nodding.  “And not just ‘cause we’re shagging and've built a life together and all that shite.”

“That’s kind of you.”  

He knows Liam watches every single episode - he gives him a full, detailed review after every live show - and it makes him feel all weird and warm inside to know he’s _rooting_ for him.  But guilty, too.  He wants Liam to have his dumb job that he has to show up to every day, a job that gives him structure, purpose.  

Any fucking job that will get him out of the fucking house once in a while would be good, at this point.

It’s not just because he gets nervous, every time Liam’s mood takes a dip, every time he can’t find the bag of crisps he swears he remembers picking up at the market, every time the toilet appears remarkably clean in an otherwise lived-in bathroom.  He trusts Liam at his word, and it’s been ages since he’s backslid, but.  

That’s just it: a constant _but_ living in a nest in Louis’ brain, one that he could just sweep into the trash if he knew Liam was distracted by work.

Truly, though: Liam’s one of the most talented people’s Louis’ ever met, and that bright-eyed, genuine talent deserves better than to be cooped up in their house, singing to himself in the shower or as he does the washing up, with only the sheep outside the windows to listen.

They mill around the hors d’oeuvres table (their traditional station during any and all events involving lots of pretentious strangers but also free food), mumbling to each other about the things they like (“tiny chicken things are ace, take at least three and maybe smuggle a few in your pockets”) and hiding the half-eaten things they hate under abandoned napkins (“the scallops are weird: avoid, _avoid_ ”).  

 _He’s being normal_ , Louis thinks, watching as Liam gingerly picks at a smoked salmon and chive phyllo pocket while struggling to juggle his champagne glass at the same time (“ _so_ good,” Liam tells him after his first bite, eyes rolling back dramatically).   _He’s okay.  Good lad.  He’s just fine._ Liam catches him watching and leans in to whisper in Louis’ ear: “You’re being weird.”

“Am I?” Louis says, eyebrows raised.  He takes a sip of his drink and snatches a chunk of cheese off of Liam’s plate.  “Show was great, eh?” he says around his mouthful.

“So great,” Liam agrees.  “Niall’s the only triple threat out of the lot of us, he was meant for the big drama of the stage.”  He says it extra-dramatically, flinging his arms out like a thespian making a grand Shakespearean declaration, and almost smacks a woman in expensive-looking furs with his champagne flute.  “Sorry, sorry!” he calls after her, before wrinkling his nose at Louis and laughing.

“What about you, then?” Louis asks, grabbing another drink off the tray of a passing server.  He says it as casually as he can, testing the waters, keeping his eyes locked on the bottom of his glass.

“What about me?”  There’s a tense pause, which they fill by grabbing whatever’s nearest and stuffing it into their mouths so they can buy another thirty seconds before either has to speak.

“D’you want to go back to work soon, Liam?” Louis asks, eventually, around a mouthful of Melba toast, red pepper jelly and camembert.  “Not even necessarily music - anything you want, you know?”

“Hadn’t really thought about it,” he says after a moment, and Louis is thankful that he hasn’t opened his jaws and bit his head off like he usually does when he broaches the topic of Liam getting the fuck out of the house once in a while.  “I guess I’ve been floating around, haven’t I?”

“A little bit of floating, yeah,” Louis nods.  “You could do a show like this - I’m sure they’d fucking claw all over each other to cast you.  You’d be amazing.”

“I’m not showy enough for the West End.  But Niall’s something else, isn’t he?”  Liam says, changing the subject with the subtlety of a bull in a very small china shop, and Louis wants to wrap the conversation back on itself and tell him, _Are you fucking kidding me right now?  You’re absolutely magnetic, Liam,_  but instead he just nods and says, “Yeah, something else alright,” and lets the moment slip out right of his hands.

“Hey!” Niall shouts from behind them, clapping Louis on the back and making him nearly choke on a shrimp.  “You made it!”  Liam stifles a laugh (“Nice one.”) and opens his arms so Niall can pull him into a hug.  “So?  What did we think, hmm?”  Niall is sweaty and hopping up and down on his toes, manically, amped up on post-performance adrenaline.  Louis feels a pang of nostalgia.

“You were amazing," Liam says, pressing a kiss to Niall's (still-sweaty) forehead and ruffling his hair.  "Truly."

 

* * *

 

They get embarrassingly drunk on free booze, after all, and end up falling into a cab home (ushered in by Niall, red-cheeked and unsteady himself - his tie’s half-unknotted and askew, and his hair’s sticking up in all directions from dozens of congratulatory hands giving him a good-luck ruffle).

“Be good, be safe!” Niall instructs, one hand on top of Liam’s head, guiding it through the door, before he slams the door shut behind them and they’re off.  Louis mumbles their address at the cabbie then leans back against the squeaky PVC of the seat, his head rolling drunkenly on his shoulders.  He rolls it towards Liam, catching his eye and winking, before sneaking a hand down the front of Liam’s trousers.

“Hey,” Liam yelps, before Louis shushes him with a pointed dart of his eyes towards the driver.  “Oh,” he breathes, nodding.  His fingers creep up Louis’ leg, a fingertip-by-fingertip crabwalk up his thigh, before palming him through his trousers _just so_ , just the way Liam knows he likes (just-this-side of too hard, too insistent), and he tenses, a moan pushing its way up and out of his throat before he can stop it.

“Oh god,” Louis groans, pressing himself up into Liam’s touch.  He catches the cabbie glancing back at them in the rearview and he bites his lip to keep himself quiet.

They do their best to keep their backs rigid and their eyes trained straight ahead, like a pair of normal, if curiously silent, fares who definitely haven’t got their hands shoved down the front of each others’ pants.  Tongue-dampened palms slide over hot skin, eliciting sharp gasps and drunken, sneaky giggles. (“Oh _God_ ,” Louis groans again, as Liam pops open his trouser button so he can get a better angle, expertly twisting his wrist just as he reaches the base and making Louis bite down on his own knuckle to keep from crying out.)

 

* * *

 

Louis wakes up with a start at half-seven and reaches over to swipe at his phone, turning off the blaring alarm before it can wake Liam up.  

Side by side on the bed, they look like they’ve been shot: splayed out, still mostly-clothed on top of the covers.  He half-remembers drunkenly jerking each other off and then flopping backwards, falling asleep where they landed.  Liam still has his tie on, and Louis carefully reaches over to loosen the knot and slide it off so Liam doesn’t accidentally strangle himself in his sleep.   _That’d be the fucking day_ , he thinks, easing up off the bed to drag himself into the kitchen.

The London flat is big and concrete-y, modern but not self-consciously so.  The inside hardly even matters, anyway, because the view is the best part.  

Louis makes himself a coffee (they have one of those terribly wasteful automatic single-serve things, and he feels like guilty every time he uses it, but God: there is nothing better than waiting thirty seconds for coffee when you’re so hungover your head might burst like a dropped watermelon) and then slides open the patio door, stepping out onto the rain-dampened balcony and lighting a cigarette.

He takes two drags, the smoke making his wobbly stomach flip-flop around inside his belly, before stubbing it out and wrapping both hands around his mug.  The sun’s mostly up and the city is already bustling: horns honking and businesses opening their shutters, a rainbow of umbrellas passing by and dancing around each other on the streets below.  

After the rain, everything looks cleansed, ready for a fresh start.

The country house in Sundon was an easy agreement, and so (as easy agreements had rarely come easily in their relationship, both personally and professionally) they’d taken it as a good omen and made an offer within twenty minutes of stepping through the front door.

(“You’re sure you don’t want to look anywhere else?  There are some newer houses in the area, requiring far less upkeep than this old thing,” the estate agent tutted, and it was clear that the house was supposed to be the C-or-even-D-option.  They just laughed and shared a look before shaking their heads.)

They filled out the offer right there on the dusty countertop as the bemused estate agent looked on, shoulders rubbing together as Liam signed and then Louis did, too.  He slowly traced over the swoops of Liam’s signature with the tip of his finger, dragging it along the crests and the waves with a solemn reverence.  Black ink smeared his skin and Liam took his hand, licking his own finger before trying to rub Louis’ clean.

“We’re doing this?” he asked, brow furrowed, watching Liam’s face.

“We’re doing this,” Liam nodded, wiping away the last of the smudge and kissing the top of Louis’ hand before letting him have it back.

“You’ll be stuck with me, you know.”

They caught each others’ eye and, as if on cue, the estate agent pretended to get a call, stepping out of the kitchen and wandering towards the living room.

“I want to be stuck with you,” said Liam, softly.  He paused and made a face, like he felt stupid for asking but needed to anyway: “Do you want to be stuck with me?”

Louis’ mouth suddenly went dry and his hands trembled, fine motor skills disappearing all at once.  He licked his lips before pressing a kiss to Liam’s cheek.  “Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he mumbled, leaning his forehead against Liam’s.  “All I want.”

And that was that.

Though it’s a good two-hour round trip to the studio every day, he’s never felt like the house was a sacrifice.  Quite the opposite: the house is everything he’s ever dreamed of, everything he’d ever hoped he’d have if (when) he achieved success and/or happiness (after over a decade of celebrity, he is well aware the two are neither correlated nor mutually exclusive).  

They’d both already achieved the splashy new-money goals they’d had when the band blew up; paying their parents’ mortgages, covering their siblings’ tuitions, sending their grandparents on twice-yearly blue-hair cruises with Elvis impersonators and chocolate fountains.  Those are the satisfying, important things - otherwise, buying _stuff_ quickly stops being gratifying when you could have just about anything you could want with the slide of a Platinum credit card.

 _Stuff_ has never been his barometer of success, anyway.

Since he was little, Louis’ had a picture in his head of himself, older and wiser and all grown up, living in a stone-walled country house blanketed in climbing ivy and surrounded for miles by rolling hills and sheep-grazed pastures.  He imagined walking in a heavy wool duffle coat and wellingtons through the long, dewy grass in the early morning, wrapped by fog and warmed by a thermos of hot chocolate.  Maybe he’d bring a book and sit on the tallest hill, overlooking the countryside, or maybe he’d be joined by someone important.  Someone he loved.

The Sundon house was all of those things.  It was, especially, the last thing.

After they signed the offer paperwork, they’d driven the whole hour-long ride back home to their London flat in complete silence, afraid that if they shared their anticipation out loud with one another they’d jinx the whole thing.

Ten seconds after they’d walked through the door, kicking off their shoes and tossing their coats on the kitchen island with exhausted mumbles, the agent called.  He knew instantly from the look on Liam’s face, from the way he slapped his hand over his mouth.  From the way he started to laugh, pulling him into a rib-crushing hug.

Then, unable to help himself, Louis sank to the floor and cried.

They still keep the London flat out of convenience and nostalgia.  It was the first place Louis bought on his own, after all.  He’d originally chosen it for the high ceilings and huge windows; they allowed him to feel open and free, like he had the sky above him, even on the days everything was too oppressive, too _much_ for him to go outside.  Too many crowds, too many photographers, too much _yelling_.  Who needs freedom when you can have _stuff?_ Some days, he’d daydream about ripping his skin off, climbing out of it like a pair of dirty jeans, and walking around: a bloody, anonymous skeleton with roving eyeballs and a striped t-shirt on.  

But the flat’s nice for when Louis is too exhausted for the drive home after a taping, for someplace their visiting families can crash, for the rare occasions they to go the club (every time after which they get home drunk and already half-hungover and swear it off forever -- until, a few weeks later, Louis’ll have an especially enticing industry party to attend or Harry’ll invite them to some weird, artsy highbrow event and they go through the whole swearing-off process all over again). 

It’s bigger than the country house: three bedrooms, two sitting rooms, a tv the size of a swimming pool, in addition to an actual heated swimming pool on the roof that they still pay out the nose to maintain, every single week, even though neither of them remembers the last time they actually used it.  It’s a beautiful house but when Louis walks through the door, it feels alien, something from a past life.  It’s not home and hasn’t been for a long time.  

In the two years since they took the plunge and signed the papers on the dusty kitchen counter, the country house has firmly replaced the London flat: warm, familiar, safe.  Home.  It holds, steeped in its walls, all the anticipations they’re afraid to speak out loud for fear of spoiling them.

Behind him, muffled by the sound of the drizzling rain, Liam mutters, “Bit fucking early, don’t you think?”

Louis starts, spinning around to find him leaned in the half-open sliding door, looking like warmed-up shit.  His left cheek is wrinkled-red from being pressed against his pillow and his hair is flat on one side, and there’s a faint ring on one side of his mouth where he’s clearly been drooling like a bloodhound.  He’s always been an excessively drooly sleeper, and Louis can’t decide if it disgusts him or if it makes his heart ache with love.

“You look absolutely lovely, darling,” he says, offering Liam his mug.  Liam takes it, gratefully, and sips at it like he’s not sure he can trust his stomach to keep it down.  

“I’m sure I do,” he groans.  “Why you up so early, then?”

“Early rehearsals today - have to record some mentor footage before tomorrow.”  He drags his toe through a puddle on the balcony and leans backwards, on his elbows, against the wet guard rail.  Liam winces: he’s always been nervous about heights.  Rain falls on the back of his neck and he leans backwards, letting it wash away the last of the sleep clogging his brain.  It doesn’t wash away the pounding hangover, but it’s a start.  “This week is Spice Girls week so wish me fucking luck.  If I have to listen to a single ukelele cover, let alone give _constructive criticism on it_ , so help me God...”  He slaps a hand over his face, dramatically.

Liam snorts a laugh and takes another sip of his coffee before handing it back.  “Christ.  Good luck is right.”  

“Thanks,” Louis winks at him.   “I’d better hop in the shower.”  He pauses before asking, voice light, “D’you have plans today, Leem?”

Liam looks at him blankly, dragging one hand through his mussed-up hair in a futile attempt to even it back out.  There’s still one spot, on the left side near the top, where it looks pasted flat to his skull.  He looks like a sleepy puppy.  “Nah, thought I’d just spend a lazy day.  Might go for a walk.”

“Alright.  Sounds good,” he nods.  “You go back to bed, I’ll be back home before you know it.”

“Mhmm,” Liam nods, leaning across the threshold without setting foot on the damp cement and giving him a peck on the cheek before wobbling towards the bedroom.  “I’ll keep it warm for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> i originally began writing this over two years ago, so while it will VERY loosely reference real-world events, many things are deliberately ignored or left out. it's practically an AU.
> 
> thank you so much for checking out the first chapter, i can tell you now that this will be fairly long. <3


End file.
